Sir, - The recent brutal murders of women in this country is disquietening in the extreme, particularly when compared with the number of such homicides in recent years. Statistics may assure that figures for these crimes are well below average in comparison with other jurisdictions. This is cold comfort to loved ones involved, since one murder is one too many.
While most murderers are generally considered male, and many murder victims often female, the perception of the latter as interpreted by the former is paramount. The dominant belief system which informs the conscience of the average male in most societies is religion. It is the social software which programmes mental attitudes in an understanding of the opposite sex. Consequently, the portrayal of women through such an influential medium will have a profound impact - on the malleable minds of impressionable males. An original theological drama concerning illicit sexual relations, involves the theme of temptation and forbidden fruit, and a consequent fall from grace through the agency of feminine complicity. This casts women irrevocably in a negative light in the unconscious of many young men, from which both have considerable difficulty extricating themselves.
The depiction of women in theological literature borders on the extreme, depicting few examples of natural human normality. Women are portrayed either as Madonnas or Magdalenes, (virgins or whores), paradigms too often used as qualities of virtue or vice. The effects of this cultural conditioning on the mindset of adolescent males, as they enter, important periods of change in their reproductive lifecycles, is frightening indeed. Such values are profoundly influential in their expectations of the opposite gender. Their contradictory nature can give rise to disastrous consequences, in a highly charged emotional environment. To a male carrying unresolved anger, they may well provide a spark to light the fuse of such a walking emotional timebomb.
The essential social equation in the relationship between the sexes is that men fear women to the extent that they see them as being emotionally stronger. And women - fear men to the extent that they see themselves as being physically weaker. Such (apparently mutually exclusive) gender qualities may give rise to a malign scenario in an intimate context, any violence inflicted being consistent with the perceived threat. The core of such problems is male emotional insecurity, and pejorative female stereotyping. Deconstructing sexism is essential in eradicating inequality, and assuaging the excesses it inevitably inspires. - Yours, etc.,
2 Lower Rathmines Road, Portobello,
Dublin 6.